The game centers primarily around space-pirate Grayson Hunt and his brother-in-arms Ishi, as they attempt to escape from the ruined paradise resort world of Stygia. After warping out of deep space and coming upon the flagship of the General that betrayed them, The Ulysses, Grayson makes a drunken kamikaze attack on the ship, essentially punching the most advanced Warbird in the galaxy in the face. While his ship is nearly destroyed and goes plummeting onto the surface of a strange alien world, the Ulysses is also wrecked, and both ships crash a few miles apart. Grayson then attempts to not only exact his revenge on the general, but get himself and Ishi off the world as well.

The gameplay consists of lots of standard shooter fare with a ton of added kicks in the form of “skillshots”. These skillshots range from something as simple as a headshot (25 points) to something zanier, like kicking someone into electric cables (50 points) or shooting them in the groin, then blowing their head off as they writhe in pain (gleefully named “Mercy” and rewarding 100 points). There are a litany of over 100 skillshots, and every new weapon added into your arsenal further increases the number of creative ways you can destroy and maim those around you. A “leash”, which you discover fairly quickly in the game, is a module that attaches to your hand and displays both skillshot information and your ammo. It ties in with the various dead-drops you discover in the game. These dead-drops are where you cash in the points you make with your kills to unlock new weapons and ammo. In the context of the story, these were left here by a previous military campaign, and (in a delightfully Darwinian twist) were designed specifically so only the good soldiers would receive more ammo or better weapons.

There are a large number of set encounters: Big, crazy scripted battles where you are up against an unusual enemy or have a super powered weapon for a short amount of time. The game plays out nicely, moving at a breakneck pace from caves to trains to cliffs to villages to cities, propelling you through an amazing number of creative, vibrant, and stunning levels. This is one of the things I enjoyed the most as this is a departure from other shooters. Each level looks beautifully detailed, from the massive vistas near a gigantic dam, to the beautiful sci-fi skyscrapers, and crazy, The Fifth Element-headbutts-Bioshock design, to many of the more civilized parts of the city. The natural flora and fauna of Stygia are just as wide ranging and vivid, from electro-flies to huge man-eating Venus fly traps, and hilarious pods called Noms that, when kicked at an enemy, latch onto their heads and start chewing headcrab-style. That’s only a taste of the enemies you encounter on this murder paradise.

The game controls are tight and easy to pick up, and they at least use the matching buttons when giving you quick time events, such as shoot when you need to shoot in the sequence. One button activates the leash, and holding it down fires a “thumper” that launches all enemies caught in the area into the air, making them easy pickings. The artificial intelligence (AI) of your allies is competent enough, and invincible to the point where you usually don’t have to worry about them. The enemy AI is akin to Left 4 Dead, in which melee enemies swarm you, and regular shooter fare by using cover to advance into a confetti of bullets raining down on them.

The game is accompanied by a suitable soundtrack of loud, action movie fanfare, and squishy, gooey, gorey sounds whenever you land a good kill. The weapons have a great, loud kick to them and the charge shots that come with each weapon sound devastating and brutal. The dialogue is ridiculous and offensive, and delightfully colourful. The visuals mix perfectly with the audio, providing graphically sound and satisfying character models, level design, and effects. Explosions in particular look bright and powerful, streaming off like fireworks from their origin.

The multiplayer and “echo” segments, both of which involves replaying single player levels or edited maps, have some enjoyable times to be had, and it’ll keep your interest for a while as you attempt to get three stars on various challenges. But aside from that, it’s a straightforward multiplayer component, with the cooperative “Horde” mode (like swarm or wave cooperative modes in other shooters) adding a more diverse element.

Bulletstorm is raw and distilled fun for a mature audience. If you love cheesy sci-fi pulp and over-the-top machismo, mixed in with a vibrant, straightforward shooter, this is a game to add to your collection.

Listed below are the games that will be affected by the shutdown (* denotes a game with online achievements):

• FIFA 07
• FIFA 08 *
• FIFA 09 *
• FIFA Street 3 *
• Fight Night Round 3
• Madden NFL 09
• NBA LIVE 08
• NBA LIVE 09 *
• NCAA March Madness 08 *
• NCAA Basketball 09 *
• NCAA Football 07
• NCAA Football 08 *
• NCAA Football 09 *
• NFL Head Coach 09 *
• NHL 08 *
• NHL 09 *
• Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09 *
• UEFA EURO 2008 *

For those of you who are gamer score enthusiasts, this is essentially a last call for these games and their online achievements.

In the age of anti-aliasing and bloom lighting, THX and 7.1 sound systems, the first thing you’ll notice is the rather poor production values of this niche title. This sequel to the PS2 cult classic has improved graphics and sound quality, and even though everything is clean, it is just not on par with what is the standard for games in the current age. They added atrocious voice-acting to Saga, which is quite a downgrade from the text-only dialogue in the previous game. I’m pretty sure my computer can generate some voice samples less irritating than the voices you hear during the cutscenes.

Luckily, most of the time you won’t be too worried about the poor animations or the voice acting.  You’ll be too immersed in deciding what spells to cast and whether to attack with a creature. To get an idea of the gameplay, think Monopoly, except that when you land on someone’s property, you have the option of trying to take control of it by battling the creature that is occupying the property. You win when the sum of your money in hand and the worth of your land adds up to the target amount, which is different for each map.  You can even level up the land you own, much like buying houses and hotels, but that carries its own risk since it’ll make that land a target. The most interesting part is that before each match, you choose a deck of spells, items, and creatures that will be available for you to use during the match. At any point, you will have a hand of six or fewer cards to choose from, so there are some decisions to be made about whether you keep cards to use later.

There is some luck entwined with the strategy, too. Much like CCGs, what cards you draw into your hand affect the outcome.  Even the most well designed deck can run into some bad luck.  From the board game side, dice rolls determine how far you can move, and since the lap bonuses scale according to the number of laps you’ve completed around the board, a string of good luck with the dice can often become a huge advantage.

Another trait it inherits from its parents (card games would wear the pants in that relationship) is that Culdcept is best enjoyed with other people. The multiplayer setup provides a range of options such as splitting off into teams, choosing random decks, and even how the colours of the squares on the board is arranged. Imagine if you could play with Board Walk beside Indiana, and you’ll get a sense of how this works. You can set the target goal when the game ends, or set a turn limit. And if you’re worried that people are going to stall the game until you run out of patience and quit, there is the option to set a time limit for each individual turn.  The victor(s) of these stressful battles receive more random cards added to their collection, which they can then use in their various decks.  CCG veterans will be familiar with the concept of card rarities, which helps you to keep playing until you have enough copies of the cards you want in your deck.

If you’re not into the multiplayer aspect of games, the single player mode has plenty to offer as well. The AI is sufficiently challenging until the quality of the cards in your collection becomes fairly good. It suffers all the stupidities you’d expect from AI, but you can choose to handicap yourself by facing a team of two opponents.  In addition to the story mode, there are also special achievements that you can get, which will award unique cards. For example, collecting all the cards of any colour will award you a special card of that colour. I would drop the dollar value to $25 CAD though if you’re not going to try the multiplayer.

Culdcept Saga is not a fast-paced game by any means.  In fact, my biggest complaint is that you can’t skip the animations that you’ll be forced to watch hundreds of times. However, Culdcept Saga is a great game if you’re looking for a game that relies solely on your mental faculties and a bit of luck, and not on reflexes.